


Dead Flies In The Summertime

by girlmarauders



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlmarauders/pseuds/girlmarauders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard & Motorbaby, Killjoys verse. Years down the road, their everyday life and relationship when she's sixteen and grown and hardened and amazing and everything Gerard ever wanted her to grow up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Flies In The Summertime

**Author's Note:**

> Pairing/Prompt: Gerard & Motorbaby, Killjoys verse. Years down the road, their everyday life and relationship when she's sixteen and grown and hardened and amazing and everything Gerard ever wanted her to grow up to be.  
> Rating: R/NC-17  
> Warnings: Language, Non-Participatory Underageness. (Frank/Gerard or Party/Ghoul. Do I have to warn for that?)  
> Notes: Massive massive thanks to my lovely betas moony_journal and misprintify for hand-holding and reading this approximately three hundred times. Title from Destroya by My Chemical Romance.
> 
> written originally for no_tags 2011

\---

Motorbaby sits on the diner’s front step in the glaring afternoon sunlight smoking. The heat makes the horizon undefined and she squints against the sunlight bouncing off the asphalt. She takes a long drag on the cigarette, letting the nicotine burn satisfyingly inside her lungs before she exhales.

There’s the sound of roller skates scratching on cheap linoleum and then Show Pony leans up against the door frame.

“Hey sweetie, you got a smoke?” He asks.

“Depends,” She says, tapping ash off the end of the cigarette. “You got anything that isn’t beans?”

Pony snorts and sits down next to her, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

“If we had anything that wasn’t beans I would fucking eat it, not trade it for a cheap smoke.” He says, holding out a hand expectantly. She fixes him with an unimpressed look but hands him a cigarette and the zippo lighter that Ghoul gave her the first time she ghosted a Drac. He lights up and his cheeks hollow as he sucks in smoke. It’s obscene and Pony curls his tongue around the cig, winking at her. Desire curls low in her belly but she rolls her eyes dramatically. She grew up with Pony’s antics. Pony laughs around his cigarette.

Motorbaby’s seventeenth birthday is in three days although they don’t actually know how old she is. Dr. D thinks she’s about sixteen but she feels older than only sixteen years. They celebrate her birthday in the middle of the summer when the heat is so intense that Dracs and Exterminators don’t venture outside the confines of Battery City’s air conditioning. She could have been born at midwinter for all they know.

She remembers, sort of vaguely, a fight when she was younger, around her eighth birthday. Ghoul was sick again and Kobra had hurt his arm in a clap and none of them wanted to try to be normal. Party had pitched a fit like no other and found paper somewhere and drawn crazy sketches of Fun Ghoul flying and Kobra with ridiculous hair until he was satisfied that they were a acceptable birthday present. She studied the drawings while Jet Star and Party screamed at each other until Ghoul stumbled out of the backseat of the Trans Am and told them to ‘fucking shut up already, you’re scaring the kid’. She’s doesn’t actually remember crying, although she must have because the ink in the drawings ran where her tears fell.

She takes another long drag on her cigarette and watches the heat mirages wiggle at the edge of her vision. Pony crosses and uncrosses his legs and watches the horizon with her. The sound of loud angry music filters through an opened window. She recognizes a strand of it as a song that Party’s been humming for days. There’s the sound of a guitar line being picked out and a zapper being adjusted. Baby’s own zapper is heavy against her thigh.

It’s the 23rd of June. She’s forgotten the year. Party knows but no one ever asks.

\--

Baby was thirteen when she started bleeding her insides out, oh my god. She remembers thinking that she was being punished for something, that something was wrong with her before she started screaming. It takes Jet ten minutes of very concentrated sweet-talking and comforting before they can figure out what’s wrong with her. Jet has to sit down and breathe very deeply and slowly for several minutes. The panic eats at her insides and she hurts all over with a dull ache concentrated in her belly. She curls in on herself on the mattress that she sleeps on in the back of the diner, trying not to look at her family or the way that they’re staring at her. Party turns white, whiter than usual, and starts blabbering about biology and menstruation and Baby just remembers staring at him thinking ‘he’s finally gone insane, I’m dying and he’s lost his mind’. Ghoul goes outside and gets high very quickly. He tells her later that he was freaked out and ‘couldn’t deal with his Baby growing up so he got high instead’. Party is turning a very funny colour. Baby is still freaking out because she’s seen her family kill Exterminators, face down Dracs, fight rival runners and something really has to be wrong with her if Party’s turning that colour over this.

Kobra has been watching the drama unfurl with his arms crossed and a burning cigarette clenched between his lips. He looks unimpressed. Kobra always looks unimpressed. He looks unimpressed when he’s impressed. Baby thinks that Party’s insanity might be catching. Party says something about a natural progression of humanity and Kobra rolls his eyes and takes his cigarette out of his mouth, dropping it on the ground.

“For fuck’s sake Gerard, you are such an idiot sometimes,” he says and reaches out a hand towards Baby. She stares at it for a very long moment before Kobra crooks his fingers and she puts her hand in his. She feels very small, for all that she’s thirteen.

“C’mon Baby, we’re gonna go for a ride. Jet, I need the keys.”

Kobra waves his free hand in Jet’s direction and Jet tosses him the keys without even bitching about his driving. Baby is very scared and uncomfortable. The feeling of being uncomfortable only grows as Kobra drives. She rides shotgun but Kobra doesn’t say anything or turn on the radio. Occasionally he shakes his blonde hair out of his eyes or taps his fingers against the steering wheel. The desert rushes by.

Kobra takes a highway exit that she doesn’t recognize, tires screeching on the asphalt. There’s a dilapidated Airstream trailer parked by the side of the road. Someone has made a dedicated effort to paint it lime green but the aluminium is still shining through. Kobra stops the car in the middle of the road and climbs out, his long limbs folding over each other as he stretches. He sighs and walks around the car to take Baby’s hand again, tugging her along after him as he walks towards the trailer.

He knocks on the door softly, like he’s afraid to wake someone. There’s banging noises and a woman shouting “fuck!” before the door is thrown open. It very nearly hits Kobra in the nose before he jerks back suddenly. A woman leans against the doorframe, wearing a short black skirt and a brown bra with no shirt. She licks her lips predatorily.

“Kobra Kid, what can I do for you today?” She says in a slow drawl. Kobra tugs slightly on Baby’s hand, bringing her out from behind him.

“I need you to explain some things to Baby for me, Vicky” He says, without asking if she’ll do it. She hums thoughtfully and looks down at Baby questioningly. Baby tries not to fidget because she’s thirteen and she’s trying to be grown-up even if crazy, possibly deadly things are happening to her body. Vicky nods.

“It’s Vicky-T, for like the hundredth time. But yeah, sure, come in. Don’t touch anything that’s orange.” She says cryptically and steps back from the door. Kobra pulls Baby in after him and sits at the far end of the trailer very emphatically not listening when Vicky explains.

Later, Jet teaches Baby how to drive and she visits Vicky whenever she wants to. The colours that Vicky won’t let you touch changes every day but Vicky tells her about breasts and clits and all these things that Baby has to worry about but Ghoul or Party don’t. This is the point at which Baby realises that life is very unfair.

\--

It’s the winter of Motorbaby’s sixteenth year and the Dracs are swarming across the zones, gobbling up runners as they go. Winter is always spent running. The Dracs and Exterminators only venture out of the cities when they no longer risk boiling the blood in their artificial veins.

Ghoul used to tell bedtime stories about snow and ice and how winter used to mean rain and sleet and cold. Motorbaby has never been cold.

They race across the desert. They fuel up when they can at abandoned way stations, salvaging whatever has been left behind by other runners heading to the edges of the zones. The Dracs will exhaust themselves by springtime and crawl back to their city, their numbers lessened by zone-runners who use their last moments to pull a trigger. Party once said that if each zone-runner took three Dracs with them before they died, the numbers would be evened. Motorbaby is sixteen and she’s ghosted four Dracs and one Junior Exterminator, still green and twitchy from the BLind drugs.

They pull in to refuel at an oasis, a group of falling down buildings clustered around a nearly dry well. Kobra leans against the boot of the Trans-Am with one hand resting gently against his zapper, watching the road impassively. They all know that their time here is limited. They have to make the border of Zone 5 before sunset. They need fuel.

Ghoul’s in a good mood. He dusted four Dracs in a clap the day before without receiving even a scratch in return and Party is happy that everyone’s alive and mostly emotionally intact. The two of them run off into one of the abandoned buildings together, giggling and jumping at each other like kids. Jet rolls his eyes. He doesn’t need to give Baby instructions; she goes to look for fuel without waiting for him. It’s faster if they split up.

Motorbaby lives in the desert with four guys. She’s seen a lot of dick in her time. She really isn’t that perturbed when she walks in on Ghoul giving Party a blowjob. She’s already found a half full canister of fuel hidden in one of the back rooms and she’s only doing a cursory search of the rest of the buildings when she pushes open the door to the crummy single bathroom.

Party is leaning up against the left wall, his eyes closed and his shoulders shaking, petting at Ghoul’s hair. Ghoul’s on his knees with one hand around the base of Party’s dick as he licks at the head. The back of Ghoul’s feet press against a rotting cabinet in the long thin bathroom.

Ghoul notices her first, standing framed in the doorway looking at them both. His eyes glint wickedly and he winks quickly before his cheeks hollow out and he leans forward until his lips press up against his own fingers. Party’s eyes fly open as his head falls back to thunk against the wall and he sees Baby standing there, one hand on her hip.

“Fuck, fucking fuck, Ghoul stop, Ghoul stop,” He pants, flapping his hand against Ghoul’s head ineffectually. Ghoul makes an amused noise in the back of his throat and Party’s eyes flutter closed as he moans. Ghoul looks to make eye contact with Baby and he smiles as much as he’s able. She rolls her eyes.

“Kobra’s gonna kill you,” She says, crossing her arms and looking at Ghoul with an unimpressed glint in her eye. Ghoul leans back, keeping one hand around wrapped tight around Party’s dick as he drags it along it slowly.

“He already knows,” Ghoul says happily once he’s pulled off, spit shiny at the corners of his mouth and on his lips. Party waves his hand again and tugs lightly on Ghoul’s longish hair.

“What the fuck Ghoul, seriously stop. It’s Baby. Just, fuck, what?” He says, although it’s around a moan and a little too breathy. Ghoul rolls his eyes and waves his free hand at Baby dismissively.

“We’re never gonna finish this until you leave. Tell Jet we’ll be out in a minute.” He says and doesn’t wait for her to leave before leaning in again. Baby laughs and turns to leave, not bothering to close the door behind her.

\--

Today is Motorbaby’s seventeenth birthday. Squashed into a diner booth, she’s writing a letter to her mother about her gifts. Every year since she was ten Party gives her paper and a bit of pencil or a squished ballpoint as a birthday present. Paper’s hard to find, writing utensils even harder, but Party never fails her. Her letters to her mother are becoming less and less frequent as she grows older but it’s become a ritual to help her mark another hard year gone by.

She remembers little of her mother, just feelings and impressions of a woman with large brown eyes and stringy blonde hair. Tucked into the glove compartment of the Trans-Am there is an old drawing that Motorbaby did in ballpoint and some of Party’s carefully hoarded markers when she was seven that has ‘Family’ written above it in her shaky hand-writing. Party’s shock of red hair is clearly identifiable although Kobra looks like a bundle of sticks tied together hastily. Ghoul is a small figure with strange colours scrawled across him where a seven-year-old Baby tried to get the tattoos right and failed. Jet Star is miles taller and bigger than the others. Her memories of him are of a much bigger man with an expansive smile. It feels as if he has grown smaller although she knows that really she’s grown to fill the space. She tells her mother this.

A movement jerks in the corner of her vision and she looks up quickly, her hand moving to her zapper unconsciously. Party sits down across from her in the booth and smiles a small smile, leaning his elbows on the table. She lets the sudden tension between her shoulders drop out and her hand falls away from her zapper.

“You almost done?” He asks. “We’re heading out soon.”

She smiles back at him and his face cracks into his wide grin.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll be done soon. You want a smoke?” She asks. Party’s grin twists into a little sarcastic smile and he huffs out a single breath of laughter.

“You have to ask?”

She laughs too and pulls her smokes out of her pocket. They were a gift from Ghoul. She sticks two into her mouth and lights up, passing one to him after she breathes in a double breath of nicotine. He accepts it from her gracefully and sucks his own hit in, sighing when the nicotine starts to get to work. She twirls her broken ballpoint in her free hand and looks down at her letter speculatively, smoke curling up from her cigarette and mixing with the smoke from Party’s.

“Tell her I send my love, yeah?” Party says casually, leaning back against the vinyl of the bench. He ashes into an empty can of beans left on the table as a make-shift ashtray. She nods and looks up at him, making sure he can see her happiness in her eyes.

“Of course,” She says and reaches out to tap the ash of her cigarette into the can of beans. Light filters through the window in a brilliant rectangle on the table, just touching the edge of her letter’s paper. She scribbles a few final lines in still shaky hand-writing and signs her name before folding the letter over itself three times. She writes ‘Mom’ in large capitals on the back of the paper. Asking for envelopes would be a bit much. She hands it to Party and then tucks her smokes back into her pocket. She doesn’t worry about him reading it.

He follows her out of the diner to the Trans-Am. It’s Jet’s turn to drive and she crawls into the back seat, cigarette still in her mouth. Party climbs in after her. It’s a squeeze, especially with Ghoul pressed against her other side. They all smell irrepressibly human (which sounds romantic but isn’t) and the air tastes of cigarette ash. Party tucks her letter into his jacket and takes a long drag on his cigarette. She sighs tiredly, knowing they they’re either sleeping outside or in the car tonight. She leans her head against Party’s shoulder and closes her eyes. Her pets her hair gently and she hears ash fall in front of her face, just inches away from her nose. She scrunches it up in disgust but doesn’t complain. It’s going to be a long ride.


End file.
